♦ Romanian capital begins to circulate beyond the border as domestic businessmen bet – directly or through acquisitions – on foreign markets.
The last years, led by 2024 and 2025, have turned out to be some of the best for the domestic business environment when it comes to development beyond Romania's borders, an additional proof that local companies have matured, and entrepreneurs have accumulated capital that they are now putting to work. «In 2025, the Romanian M&A market remained solid, even if it was a year marked by a difficult macroeconomic context, high inflation and political volatility. (…) Acquisitions made by established local firms increased in the first half of the year, both through domestic and outbound transactions», recently declared Iulia Bratu, head of lead advisory at EY-Parthenon Romania. She therefore refers to the fact that in 2025, just like in 2024, domestic companies made transactions abroad, in Bulgaria, Belgium and Greece.
Relevant examples
This evolution represents good news in the context in which businesses from the West, but also from countries in the region, such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, have developed in recent decades in Central and Eastern Europe, and some even in the whole of Europe. In the same period, domestic businesses anchored their activity in the port of Romania, either because of a lack of appetite for risk, or because the local market offered enough room for growth. Recently, however, as domestic competition has increased, and there is not as much room for development, local companies are beginning, timidly at the moment, to take steps beyond the border. Some expand through acquisitions, others directly. The Romanian brand Luca currently has ten simigeria in Poland and the expansion continues. Similarly, the chain of cafes 5 to go, the most extensive player on the local level, with over 700 units, took its first steps in Bulgaria in 2025. It already has a few premises, and in three to four years it wants to reach 150 cafes. For this development, entrepreneurs Radu Savopol and Lucian Bădilă, founders of 5 to go, recruited a local CEO.
Greenfield or through acquisitions?
However, there are also businesses that are already well anchored in foreign markets. EMI, a Romanian company active in the industry, is expanding in the West directly and through acquisitions. «Since the entry of Morphosis Capital and Innova Capital into the shareholding, from a purely Romanian player, EMI has evolved into an independent European leader, with an integrated business, successfully completing five add-on acquisitions in Belgium, Slovakia, the Netherlands and Romania, acquisitions that led to a quadrupling of revenues and EBITDA. In 2025, EMI made two strategic takeovers: it consolidated its position as a regional leader in Belgium, becoming one of the first two players in the market, and expanded its footprint in the Netherlands», Andrei Gemeneanu, co-founder of Morphosis Capital, said recently. The company founded by Jerome France attracted two funds as shareholders – Innova Capital and Morphosis Capital, with the help of which it accelerated external development. «Through the development of regional champions, Central Europe will integrate more easily with Western Europe. This is how the two will come closer, not only through politics», Krzysztof Kulig, senior partner at Innova Capital, one of the most active private equity funds in Romania in recent decades, said a few months ago.
Regional ambitions
AD Auto Total, a company that deals with the distribution of auto parts, and also one of the largest entrepreneurial businesses on the local level, has the ambition to become a regional champion, already starting the expansion on neighboring markets. Today, the company operates in four markets, namely Romania, Hungary, the Republic of Moldova and Bulgaria. «We bought a company in Bulgaria, this happened in the summer of 2025. In 2026 we will enter with all our strength, with everything we know how to do, there. The company we purchased is number four in the market, and for us the purchase represented a first step to be able to enter this country which is closer to our central warehouse in Bucharest than certain areas in Romania,» Mihai Staicu, the founder of AD Auto Total, told ZF recently. The entrepreneur admits that he is also looking at other purchases, stating that «the next step will be somewhere in Western Europe». At the moment, however, he is focusing his attention on consolidating the business in the countries that are now in the portfolio. For example, going forward, in Bulgaria, the group aims for an organic growth in the next period. In the future, however, the businessman does not rule out other transactions. «Our plan is to reach 1 billion euros in revenue in the next three years across all of our operations in the four countries.»
From technology onwards
For a long time, expansion through external acquisitions was – at least in the case of Romanian players – the prerogative of IT companies. Names such as Bitdefender, one of the first IT companies created in Romania after the fall of communism, or AROBS, the largest entrepreneurial technology company listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, have made such moves since a few years ago. They continued to make purchases in 2025. However, in the same year marked by internal and external uncertainty, other domestic companies from completely different sectors also made such transactions. AD Auto Total is just one example. Moreover, a transaction initialed by a Romanian entrepreneurial company abroad was the largest in the M&A market in Q3/2025. It is the first time in the last seven years that this happens, usually foreigners are the ones who buy Romanian companies. In the third quarter of 2025, 86 transactions were announced on the Romanian market, the highest number at quarter level in the last five years. However, this was not the only premiere, according to a report by the audit and consulting company EY. In the July-September period, in Romania, a single transfer of over 100 million dollars was initialed. And, more than that, it is an outbound transaction. That is, a Romanian company made a takeover across the border. It is about the acquisition of Praktiker Hellas, a Greek retailer of DIY and home products, by Paval Holding, for 151 million dollars. The seller was Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, a Canadian investment and insurance group. This transaction follows other moves of Pavăl Holding abroad, such as Waldhaus Flims Wellness Resort in Switzerland ($78 million, 2024) and Grand Hotel Gardone in Italy (2023). Pavăl Holding is the investment vehicle of the Pavăl family, which owns Dedeman.
Looking east
Similarly, the MedLife group entered the market of the Republic of Moldova in 2025 by acquiring the majority stake in All Clinic, a company that brings together three private, multidisciplinary clinics, under contract with the National House of Health Insurance of Moldova. The acquisition represented the second move of the MedLife group across the border, after taking over, in 2019, the majority stake of the Rózsakert Medical Center Group in Hungary. «A development in the Republic of Moldova is also a first test of our ability to replicate our broadband know-how to the East in one or more business lines such as clinics, laboratories, hospitals or dentistry», said Mihai Marcu, President and CEO of the MedLife Group. Such a move, like any external expansion, is not easy. «It's not easy to enter a new market. We ran into a lot of administrative issues», admits Irina Gavrilă, the operations director of the company Techno Food Group from Sibiu, founded in 2004 by her father, the entrepreneur Nelu Gavrilă. Techno Food Group is present throughout Romania and, since last year, the company has also expanded to Bulgaria and the Republic of Moldova. Many times, domestic entrepreneurs choose neighboring markets or those in the region to expand. The geographical proximity and, sometimes, even the similarities in terms of consumption are what encourage them in these endeavors. However, the situation is not specific to them. Companies from all over the world did and are doing the same. Then, gradually, it continues to conquer new and new markets. For Romanian businesses, it is only the beginning, as it is becoming more and more obvious that the domestic business environment is becoming more mature, better capitalized and is starting to put money to work.